INTRODUCTION
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I. Rationale
Linguistics has become a big scientific area and thanks to many linguists, there have
been a lot of studies, researches, books, article, etc about linguistics. In the past, linguistics
and language studying have mostly examined in terms of phonological, lexical and syntactic
features and sentences which are preferably taken out of the context. Then the theory of
Chomsky of the power of linguistics and some other researches born and have gradually
changed the previous views. Nowadays, linguistics has been studied “in their full textual,
social and psychological context” (Cook: 1989: ix). It means that language now is studied
comprehensively how people communicate successfully, what parameters help them to take
language into communication or in other word discourse, “the language in use for
communication” (Cook. 1989). Discourse has been approached by many linguists as
Halliday, M.A.K (1985), Crytal, D (1992), Coulthard, M. (1985), Moore, J. et al. (1980),
Reichman, R (1985), etc. They have contributed a lot on the theory of discourse. In
Vietnam, we have Assoc. Prof. Dr Nguyen Hoa, Assoc. Prof. Dr Vo Dai Quang, Dr. Hoang
Van Van, Dr. Tran Ngoc Them. And there are some other studies on discourse as Bui, N. A.
(2003), Dam, T.H. (2007), etc.
Cohesion is an important factor of discourse which has attracted a lot of attention of
linguists. The most significant research on cohesion is “Cohesion in English” by Halliday
and Hasan (1976). In which, grammatical items are analyzed in terms of the way they link
sentences together. Besides that, Halliday and Hasan (1976) also give “a brief discussion of
the cohesive function of intonation”. And Coulthard, M. (2001) also introduces the
significance of intonation in discourse. These researches theoretically discuss how
grammatical means and intonation can relate meanings within one sentence or within
sentences to make them coherent. Moreover, they also get the practical value that help
language user to apply these theories into everyday communication to gain the best result.
People who can use grammatical and intonation as effective means of cohesion, can easier
get successful in communication.
Doing this thesis, I wish to understand more about cohesion as well as to improve

* Introduction: introduces the rationale, the aims, the scope, method and structure of the
study
* Development: this part consists of three chapters:
Chapter I: theoretical background: provides overview of discourse, narrative
discourse, cohesion and intonation in English
Chapter II: Grammatical means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse
Chapter III: Intonation as a mean of cohesive device in narrative discourse
* Conclusion: give some summary of concluding remarks of the thesis and suggestions for
further researches.
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DEVELOPMENT
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CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND
LITERATURE REVIEW
I. Literature review
The concept of discourse has been discussed for a long time and linguists have given
various definitions. Halliday (1985:318) defined “discourse is a multidimentional process”
whereas Cook defines “discourse is stretches of language perceived to be meaningful,
unified and purposeful”. Sharing the same idea with Cook, Crystal (1992: 25) states
“discourse is a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence,
often constituting a cohesive unit such as a sermon, an argument, a joke or a narrative”.
Besides that, Widdowson defines “Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of
communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing a
rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of
communication”.
Besides that, there exist a number of other definitions of discourse which illustrate
the perspectives of discourse from different aspects. Hatim and Mason (1990) define
discourse is “a matter of expression of attitude” and is “a mode of speaking and writing
which involve the participants in adopting a particular on certain area of socio-cultural
activity: racial discourse, scientific discourse, domestic discourse”.

Thus, the majority of linguists seem to share a common view when defining the
concept of discourse. Their definitions, though expressed in different ways, all emphasize
the two most important aspects of discourse:
• The structure of discourse: discourse is a well-form of organization above the level
of sentence.
• The function of discourse: discourse servers as a mean of communication
I.2 Discourse and text
A distinction is usually made between the word “text” and “discourse”, however, so
far, there have been many ways of viewing the term. For some linguists, these two terms
seem to be used almost interchangeably. Text is defined as a piece of spoken or written
language. A text maybe considered from the point of view of its structure and/or its
functions (Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics). It is
impossible to fully understand a text without reference to the context in which it occurs. A
text consists of one word or it may be of considerable length (Swales 1987: 13). Actually,
text structure reveals in linguistic terms what is generally considered to be extralinguistic,
that is, this “public function” (for an example of press news, see Garrido 1998c). Mann,
Matthiesen and Thompson (1992: 41) posit three different levels of structure: “holistic” or
text structure, “relational” structure (where rhetorical relations obtain) and “syntactic”
structure, or sentence structure. Instead of this three-layer structure, there is only a
hierarchical one, from text to discourse, from discourse to sentence, or, rather, from
sentence structure to discourse structure, and from discourse structure to text structure.
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Sentences are linked in sequences which may be called ‘discourses’ and then
organized into larger structures, up to texts. And texts are not defined in terms of coherence
or relevance but by the connection existing between their component discourses. Similarly,
a discourse is not defined in terms of contextual information, but it is the result of
connecting its component sentences. In order for this connection to take place, additional
information must be included. This happens whenever a unit is connected to others.
Frequently this additional information is added as default, but it may also originate in
preceding units. Thus words are linked to each other into phrases, phrases into clauses,

performers of actions.
A narrative is a text, composed in any medium, which describes a sequence of real
or unreal events. It is common to make a primary distinction between two basic components
of narrative: narrative plot and narrative discourse. The term plot is generally understood to
refer to the abstract storyline of a narrative; that is, to the sequence of elementical,
chronologically ordered events which create the ‘inner core’ of a narrative. Narrative
discourse, by contrast, encompasses the manner or means by which that plot is narrated.
Narrative discourse, for example, is often characterised by the use of stylistic devices such
as flashback, prevision and repetition-all of which serve to disrupt the basic chronology of
the narrative’s plot. Thus, narrative discourse represents the realised text, the
understandable and noticable piece of language which is produced by a story-teller in a
given interactive context.
In a narrative, something happens, such that we seen a “before” by another state of
affairs and this later is, ideally, not merely temporally but casually related to the formal
state. Narratives are most commonly narrated in words, in speech (as in oral literature and
jokes) or (chiefly) in writing; but they can be enacted dramatically on stage, or visualized in
the imagines of film and gesture of mimime”.
Narrative is distinguished from the description- a telling of the ways things are. It is
also distinguished from much expository writing and expression of opinion which are often
explanations of the way things are, or an argument for the way we believe things should be.
So what makes a difference between a narrative and other types of discourse is the fact that
a narrative is a text in which something humanly interesting has happened, or a significant
change in the situation has occurred.
Narrative can be told, and, in some cases, do not require verbal language (as in the
way of mimime); thus, narrative form is medium-independent. Like any kind of formal
organization, narrative form is able to exploit the particular characteristics of the media
similarly verbal narrative will exploit the characteristics of language.
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II. Cohesion in English
II.1 What is cohesion?

that he is reading about the same participant (topic) introduced earlier in that discourse.
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Halliday and Hasan were two linguists who published good studies of cohesion within
English discourse. Every language has its own cohesion strategies.
According to Halliday and Hasan, there are five types of cohesive devices in English
and in the lexicogrammatical system of the language. They are reference, substitution,
ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Reference, substitution, and ellipsis are
grammatical; lexical cohesion is lexical; conjunction stands on the border line between the
two categories.
II. 2. Cohesion versus coherence
In history of linguistics study, there have been some of the disagreement stems from
diverse views of what cohesion is and how it differs from coherence. Coherence refers to
the ways in which the parts of a piece of writing are linked together to form a whole which
is often confused with cohesion. While cohesion links among sentences and within them,
coherence is the broader characteristic of unity of the text as a whole. According to
Richards et. al. (1992:62), “cohesion is the grammatical and or lexical relationships between
the different elements of a text. This may be the relationship between different sentences or
between different parts of a sentence”. And coherence is “the relationships which link the
meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text” (Richards et.
al.1992:62).
Cohesion is only one component of coherence. In addition to cohesion, at least one
other factor must be present for a text to have coherence; that factor is organization. Other
factors like situational consistency add coherence to text Cohesion exists within text and
adds to the coherence of text. It may be useful to think of coherence as something the reader
establishes-or hopes to establish-in the process of reading connected discourse coherence
is both a text-related and a reader-related phenomenon.
Larson, who provides a fine summary of major studies on cohesion in composition
research agrees with this definition and goes on to say, “The determination of coherence is
fundamentally an interpretation by a reader. It is part of a transaction between text and
reader, between the reader’s world and the writer’s language”. Coherence comes from

Becca: I thought you said you’ve been to like a million schools.
Cohesion is a manifestation of certain aspects of coherence, and a pointer towards it,
rather than its cause or necessary result. Cohesion is never more than a partial textual
realization of coherence (which is a feature of the perception of text rather than of text
itself). Even in texts with a density of cohesive ties, many links of co-reference, cause,
sequence, and logic, though recoverable by the readers or the listeners, remain unstated and
have no textual manifestation whatsoever. Though an increase in cohesion may, up to a
certain point, make a text clearer, less ambiguous, and more coherent, there is a point
beyond which it may make it duller and less readily processible. This is, for example,
particularly evident in legal text.
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II. 3. Cohesion and discourse
It will be clear from what have been said above is that cohesion is not just another
name for discourse structure. Discourse structure is, as its name, a type of structure. The
name is used to refer to the structure of some postulated unit higher than the sentence, for
example the paragraph, or some larger entity such as episode or topic unit.
The concept of cohesion is set up to account for relations in discourse, but in rather a
different way, without the implication there is some structural unit that is above the
sentence. Cohesion refers to the range of possibilities that exist for linking something with
what has gone before. Since this linking is achieved through relations in meaning (we are
excluding from consideration the effect of formal devices such as syntactic parallelism,
metre and rhyme), what is in question is the set of meaning relations which function in this
way: the semantic resources which are drawn on for the purpose of creating text. And since,
as we have stressed, it is the sentence that is the pivotal entity here – whatever is put
together within one sentence is part of a text – we can interpret cohesion, in practice, as the
set of semantic resources for linking a sentence with what have gone before. From the
standpoints of Haliday and Hasan “the primary determinant of whether a set of sentences do
or do not constitute a text depends on cohesive relationship within and between the
sentences. For example:
“Immediately after my leaving college, a well-known auditing firm in London

• Reiteration:
The major relation between vocabulary items in texts is reiteration. It can be seen as
either restarting a word in a later part of the discourse by direct repetition or by reasserting
its meaning by exploiting such lexical relations as synonyms, antonyms and superordinate.
For example:
The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
“Don’t they smell beautiful!”
Her mother gave a short laugh.
‘No’, she said, ‘not to me. It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and’
chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk,
he’d got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole.
• Collocation:
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By Richards et. al. (1992:62) “collocation refers to the restrictions of how words can
be used together, for example which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which
verbs and nouns are used together”.
For example we always say “do business” and “make a profit”, not “make business”
and “do a profit”. Thus, here “make” collocates with “a profit”, and “do” collocate with
“business”.
II.4.2. Grammatical cohesion
Grammatical cohesion can be defined as the surface marking in written discourse,
and between utterances and turns in speech. These links can be grouped into 4 types:
reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction.
II.4.2.1 Reference:
Reference is a mechanism that relates one element of the text to another one for its
interpretation, which can be present or not (endophoric and exophoric reference). Reference
is a semantic relation. According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics “reference in its wider sense would be the relationship between a word
or phrase and an entity in the external world” and “reference in its narrower sense is the
relationship between a word or phrase and a specific object” These two explanations are

the level of grammar and vocabulary, or linguistic form”. Substitution is used to avoid
repeating information that is known to the hearer. Unlike ellipsis which leaves a structural
slot empty, substitution replaces it by a filler word. There are three types of substitution:
nominal, verbal and clausal one. Most of the substitutes are pro-forms within sentences,
which are used across sentences. In specific words, substitutes may be pro-forms for
adverbials, pro-forms for predicate and predication, and also pro-forms for the direct object
clause. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 91), nominal substitution includes “one”,
“ones”, “same”: verbal substitution consists of “do” and clausal substitutes are “so”, “not”.
II.4.2.4 Conjunction
Conjunction is another type of cohesive relation in the grammar. Conjunction, in
nature, is rather different from the other cohesive relations, form both reference, on the one
hand, and substitution and ellipsis, on the other. It does not function to remind the reader of
previously mentioned entities, actions and state of affairs. In other words, it is not what
linguists call an anaphoric relation. Conjunctive elements are cohesive not in themselves,
but indirectly, by virtue of their specific meanings. They serve as cohesive devices because
they signal relationships that can only be fully understood through reference to other parts
of the text.
As grammatical items, Cook (1989:21) defined: “Conjunctions are words or phrases
which explicitly draw attention to the type of relationship between one sentence and clause
and another”. There are four types of conjunctions: temporal, causal, additive and
adversative. Following are some examples of conjunctive relations:
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Additive: and, and also, or, furthermore, in addition, besides, alternatively,
incidentally, by the way, that is, I mean, in other words, etc.
Adversative: yet, though, only, however, nevertheless, despite this, in fact, actually,
however, on the other hand, at the same time, etc
Causal: so, hence, therefore, consequently, for this reason, account for this,
as a result, for, because, otherwise, etc
Temporal: then, next, after that, just then, at the same time, finally, at last, soon,
meantime, until then, etc

spoken language. Intonation is inevitable whenever a language is spoken. It varies from
languages to languages, even regions to regions in English. When you say something you
can not say without some kind of intonation, even a monotone can be classed as a kind of
intonation. Intonation is integral in speech.
III.2 Tone vs intonation
III.2.1 Parameters
Intonation is the linguistic use of pitch in utterance. Every language has its own
melody, no language is spoken on the same musical notes at all the time. The voice goes up
and down and the different notes of the voice combine to make tones. Tone that is the
sound, especially with reference to its pitch quality, strength, pitch aspect of a syllable while
intonation is the high or low, up or down of pitch in syntactic level. The pitch of voice
expressing in tone is only happened in a syllable so tone belongs to syllable and it has the
distinctive function. When the utterance is a syllable one, tone becomes intonation. Tone
does not usually express meaning which is only a phonological factor that distinct the
meaning while intonation expresses meanings.
In many languages, of which English is one, the tone belongs not to the word but to
the word group. We can say a group of word definitely or we can say it hesitantly, angrily
or kindly; we can say it with interest or without interest, and these differences are largely
made by the tones we use. In other words, the words don’t change their meaning but the
tone adds something to the words and what it adds is the speaker’s feelings at that moment.
This way of using tones is called intonation. Crystal (1969) identifies four basic tones (fall,
rise-fall, rise, and fail-rise) while O'Connor and Arnold (1973) distinguish only two (rise
and fall). Brazil et al. (1980) endorses five tones (fall, rise, rise-fall, fall-rise, and level)
whereas Cruttenden (1986) recognizes seven tones (high-fall, low-fall, high-rise, low-rise,
fail-rise, rise-fall, and mid-level).
A tone unit is an utterance or part of an utterance which contains a single tone and,
therefore, one tonic syllable. A speaker begins the pitch movement we have called tone on
prominent syllable. This syllable is then called tonic syllable and is indicated in the
transcriptions by the use of small capital letters and underlining. What makes a tone a rising
or falling or any other type of tone is the direction of the pitch movement on the last

function.
• Grammatical function: Intonation can distinct between statement utterance, question,
exclamation, additional utterance and ordering / request utterance.
• Attitudinal function: Intonation is used as a mean to express the speaker’s feelings,
attitudes (happy, sad, glad, angry, worry, etc.). In combination with grammatical
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function, one utterance can express different attitudes, feelings of the speakers in
different situations.
• Accentual function: This function helps the speaker to create the effect of sound in any
stressed or unstressed syllable in any utterance. Accentual emphasizing in these
situations are causing by tempo to express the informed information in each intonation
unit.
• Discourse function: Intonation helps speakers and hearers to achieve what is called
“new information” (unknown information) or “old information” (already known
information) in an intonation unit.
• Distinctive function: Intonation plays this function to make the utterance express
different stretches of meaning in different situations. Same grammatical structure can
express different meanings by mean of intonation.
In summary, intonation functions grammatically, phonetically and communicatively.
It used all means of grammar and phonetic to express speakers’ feelings, attitudes, purposes
to achieve communicative value.
III.2.2.2 Some communicative functions of tone
Traditionally, the description on the intonation of communicative functions is
associated with the glide down, glide up, take off and dive.
A falling tone is by far the most common used tone of all. It signals a sense of
finality, completion, belief in the content of the utterance, and so on. A speaker, by
choosing a falling tone, also indicates to the addressee that that is all he has to say, and
offers a chance (turn-taking) to the addressee to comment on, agree or disagree with, or add
to his utterance. It is usually used with statements, wh-questions, commands, exclamations.
On the other hand, the glide up is used in genuine 'Yes/No' questions where the

substitution, ellipsis and conjunctions in a film name “The perfect man”. This film is about
a teenager girl, Holly, whose life is different from other girls. She lives with her mother,
Jean-a baker and her younger sister, Zoe. Her mother always shows her wish to find a man
for her and she moves from this place to another one whenever her heart broken so their
family travel a lot and they don’t live long in one place. This make the girl get into many
troubles. She regularly has to get familiar with new places of living, new schools, new
friends, etc and when she just gets used to with that, she has to go on moving. Thus, she
decides to find a perfect man for her mother so she can live stably in one place. When they
moved to Blooklin, Holly has a friend called Amy whose uncle becomes the model for
Holly to build the perfect man for her mother. She creates a perfect man basing on the
talking with Amy’s uncle, Ben. Holly acts as the perfect man Ben that she created sending
her mother flowers, messages, emails. However, things didn’t happen as what she intended
but finally everything is perfect as she wished. The film is about how Holly finds the perfect
man for her mother and how she overcomes and get through her troubles when she has to
change a lot of living places, schools and friends as well as how Holly and her mother
understand each other and become good friends. This is a three-hour long film so I just try
to find and analyze some typical examples of grammatical cohesion that are used in the
film.
II. Grammatical means as cohesive devices in narrative discourse
II.1 Reference
Reference items are forms which make reference to something else for their
interpretation, instead of being interpreted semantically in their own right. If their
interpretation lies outside the text, the relationship is said to be an exophoric one. The
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references which look back in the text for their interpretation are called anaphoric and those
which look forward in the text for their interpretation are cataphoric relationships
(McCarthy,1990). According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), only endophoric reference is
cohesive. Exophoric reference contributes to the creation of text, in that it links the
language with the context of situation, but it doesn’t contribute to the integration of one
passage with another so that the two together form part of the same text hence it does not

relate all the sentences to make it becomes a complete and meaningful text. I would like to
show more examples; this is the first talking between Holly and Ben, Amy’s uncle, who is
supposed to be the symbol of the perfect man.
Amy: This is Holly.
Holly: Hi.
Ben: Hi, Holly.
Holly: Nice to meet you (2).
Ben: (into phone) Why wouldn't she be mad? Huh? Well, there's only one thing you
can do. Flowers. And you can't go cheap either. Nope. A dozen. Longstemmed.
Amy: He (2) knows about females.
Lance: He (2) knows more about females than I know about females.
…Holly: He (2) doesn't actually believe that, does he (2)?
Ben: (into phone) But who am I to know? Call me tomorrow and let me know how it
worked out. Bye. (to Holly) Yes, I do believe that. Don't you?
Holly: That flowers always work?
…Ben: Wow, your (3) friend's so cynical!
Amy: Sounds like she (1)is not into romance.
As you can see here, there are four people taking part in the conversation and this text
including two different parallel conversations: the conversation of Ben on the phone and the
other among Amy, Holly, Ben and Lance, the barman. Now let’s see how personal
pronouns link to make both conversations understandable and meaningful. Let’s see the
later conversation, I underline and number some personal reference that is cohesive,
pronouns number (1) refers to Holly, (2) - Ben and (3) to Amy. Amy and Holly came to
meet Ben as Holly complained about her mother and Amy said that her uncle Ben can help.
Amy introduces Holly and Ben and during their greeting “you” indicates Ben and then “he”
is the personal reference of “Ben”. And “he” helps us to link the sentence Holly said with
the previous part of the conversation, the greeting of Ben and Holly which was interrupted
by the conversation on the phone of Ben. It is interesting that here we have two men Lance
and Ben but we can understand that “he” Holly refers here is Ben not Lance. Besides that
the possessive adjective “your” in the sentence “Wow, your (3) friend's so cynical!” Ben

Jean: Me. Isn't that weird? Someone left me flowers?
…Holly: Well, obviously, someone that saw you at the shop.
…Jean: Or that I love orchids?
…Holly: Mom, look, this is the most romantic thing that a man has ever done for
you. Quit questioning it and enjoy it.
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The demonstrative reference here “those”, “that”, “this” all refer to something that
mentioned before or after. “Those” links to the orchid we already knew from previous part,
“that” in the sentence “Isn't that weird?” relates to the event that someone left flowers for
Jean and so on. All demonstrative here relate to the event that Jean received an orchid from
a secret admirer and they link the sentences of the conversation together. Let’s see the
following conversation in which demonstration reference is a mean of cohesion, the talk of
Holly and Adam, her boy friend at school whose parents divorced and who can draw really
well:
Adam: No. Actually, after he and my mom split up, that's pretty much the only thing
we did together. But, uh, hey! At least I learned how to draw, right?
Holly: Divorce as a career builder. That's nice.
…Adam: No, to, a, ah, comic convention.
Holly: No, not that either.
Adam: Oh, oh, well there's, there's one coming up…
It can be seen from the example that “there” refers back to the comic convention to
link to the previous sentence of Adam and “that” appear three times in the conversation.
First “that” refers to thing that Adam and his dad did together when he was small (which is
mentioned before). Second “that” relates what Holly said in previous sentence and one
more “that” the participants demonstration, relates to the comic convention. Here are more
examples of demonstrative reference, the participant and neutral ones:
• “Wow! I will say one thing though. For those of you who haven't done it yet, put
"Must see New York skyline" on your list of things to do before you die.”
• “No. Some things are. Like a man that sends you an orchid, the most romantic flower,
and then turns around and sends you a yellow rose. That's the kind of flower that